


some people call this wisdom

by PenelopeJadewing



Series: Kacchako Bittersweet Week 2018 [8]
Category: Naruto, 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
Genre: Bakugou Katsuki is a Dork, F/M, Gen, Kacchako Bittersweet Week, Ochako and Sasuke just want to get out, Trapped In Elevator, he's definitely the jealous type, random villain attack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-16
Updated: 2018-10-16
Packaged: 2019-08-02 23:03:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16314326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PenelopeJadewing/pseuds/PenelopeJadewing
Summary: A sudden Villain attack leaves Ochako trapped in an elevator with an old classmate from high school.





	some people call this wisdom

**Author's Note:**

> Transitioning back into general AU stuff with this! Goodness, I don’t know why, but Ochako is much harder to write for me than Katsuki... and i feel bad because she deserves all the love too. TuT But i dunno, maybe my brain's just really tired...
> 
> \- P. J.

When Ochako stepped into the elevator at the Gunhead MA Hero Agency, she never would have predicted the pickle she’d find herself in in just ten minutes. She’d checked in at the front desk, just like any normal person; she had an appointment. A job interview. As much as she loves rescue work and having Ryukyu as her boss, she feels ready to move on to bigger things. Tougher things. So she’d gotten in contact with the Battle Hero who’d trained her back in high school—he’d welcomed her to an interview without hesitation.

It hadn’t taken much to get past the front desk. With her credentials, work experience, and Quirk, she’d  be a superb addition to the Gunhead team, despite her lower position in the national rankings. She’s in the top 20, which will still mean a lot. It’s a win-win for both.

She’d been a bit nervous when she found the elevator, but job interviews are always intimidating. Even when conducted by someone you know. She’d been bracing herself for a tense ride up to the top floor when a gauntlet thrust through the closing doors, radiating blue light from the containment chamber on the palm. She recognized the glove instantly and thought it strange he hadn’t changed it at all since U.A.

The younger Uchiha is intimidating company, but Ochako’s seen far worse, considering who she’s dating these days. And despite all the horrors she’d heard about from his junior and senior years, he seemed… all right. Normal. He was as surprised to find her here as she was for him, and a bit of light small talk had followed. Small talk has never exactly been Ochako’s favorite pastime, but it will forever be better than awkward silence. It had only taken a minute for them to settle into comfortable silence.

Then something had made the building shake. The elevator shaft rumbled, the lights blinked out, and the room shuddered to a halt. Something, a number of somethings, clattered down atop the frozen metal capsule, the sound making their ears ring before all went totally silent.

And that’s how she found herself blinking into the dark, trapped in a broken elevator with Uchiha Sasuke.

His breath is quiet now, still coming from the opposite side of the blank space. “You hurt, Uraraka?” he mutters.

Just as she’s about to answer, the emergency lighting comes on, dimmer and redder than the regular lights. Still, it’s enough to survey the damage. Dust swirls around them. Directly in front of her, Sasuke stands with one hand braced against the wall, his dark eyes darting across the ceiling—surveying, same as her. He doesn’t seem to be injured at all… no blood, no scrapes, no favoring one limb over any other.

She shakes her head in the scarce light. “No, I’m good. You?”

“Just fine. What was that?”

“It happened too fast to tell. Could you hear anything? You know, with your Quirk?”

He clicks his tongue, but there’s no hostility in it. Nothing like her boyfriend. “Tch, no, it doesn’t work like that. I wasn’t expecting an attack here.”

She follows his gaze upward, across the elevator ceiling. The top is horribly dented, like something with impact strength rivaling Kirishima went and punched against it from the outside. No breaks, though. Aside from being a little off kilter, the structure seems all right…

“Think it’s safe to move?” she whispers.

His eyebrows furrow. “Why?”

“The hatch.”

He looks back to the ceiling, where she knows he can make out the edges of the emergency door just as she had, and he seems to think this over, weighty contemplation in his black eyes. Slowly, he nods. “Using your Quirk, it’s worth a shot.”

Just as she presses her fingertips together and rids herself of gravity’s pull, her phone vibrates in her coat pocket, disrupting the tension in the air with a sound that’s far too domestic for the situation. Still, Ochako reaches for it, pausing to glance at the screen, taking in the caller ID. She puffs her cheeks, and as she starts to drift aimlessly, looks to Sasuke below her.

“Hey, can you hold me steady?” She swipes her thumb across the phone screen. “Gotta take this or I’ll regret it later.”

Sasuke nods and braces his gloved hands on either side of her waist, while she raises the phone to her ear.

“Katsuki!” she greets and braces herself. “I’m a little busy right now…”

Stunningly, he doesn’t yell. Yet. Instead, he almost sounds… concerned.  _“Hey, you’re over at Gunhead’s right?”_

“Um… yeah.” She frowns at the ceiling and reaches up with her free hand to push against the hatch. It doesn’t budge. She looks around for a latch of some kind.

_“Yeah, well, there’s a full blown s***fest being reported live right now. Some Villain showed up to pick a fight with a Pro on patrol. Are you okay? You’re not fighting.”_

“Oh—yeah, I’m okay. Just… a little stuck. In an elevator.” Trust Katsuki to pay attention. Though she finds his well-masked protective instinct somewhat endearing (even though he’d be the first to tell her she can totally kick a** just fine), it’s very ill-timed. It’s hard to properly search their escape route when one hand’s busy. She sighs into the receiver and tilts her head down to her ex-classmate. “Can you let me float a little higher?”

Sasuke nods and gives her a small push upwards, keeping her ascent steady until she feels she can get a better look around the hatch—or what’s supposed to be the hatch. It’s a bit… dented. Like the rest of the ceiling.  _Oh no, I really hope it wasn’t damaged… it’s just a panel, right? It should just push off!_

 _“Wait,”_  blurts Katsuki over the line,  _“who’s there with you?”_

“Just Sasuke. I mean, Uchiha Sasuke.” She frowns a little and glances down again, taking in Sasuke’s Hero uniform. “Um, Insight? You know who I’m talking about.”

 _“WHAT!?” Now_  he yells, and Ochako pulls the speaker a short distance from her ear, a fraction of a second too late.  _“THAT GUY’s there!?”_

Grimacing a little, she returns the phone to its place so she can answer in a calm, rational manner. “Yes, Katsuki, that’s what I said.”

“Hello!” Sasuke says from below, still his usual monotone but loud enough that she knows her boyfriend can hear. Only fair, it seems, since both of them can hear every word Katsuki speaks in his traditionally too-loud voice. However, this is the loudest she’s ever heard Sasuke speak and it’s enough to make her look at him sideways in surprise. He raises an eyebrow in question at her peculiar reaction.

 _“What’s HE doing there?”_  Katsuki snarls.

Ochako flaps her hand even though he can’t see it. “Oh, he’s… um… actually, I dunno.” She tilts the phone away from her mouth and addresses her companion. “What are you doing here? I forgot to ask.”

“Working,” is Sasuke’s short answer, again spoken loud enough so that Katsuki can hear.

She doesn’t need to have her ear close to hear his rising irritation.  _“No, what is he DOING there??”_

“I think he means specifics,” she mutters a half-attempt at mediation to Sasuke, who just rolls his eyes.

“Prostitution. What do you think, genius?”

While Ochako feels herself blush a little bit at the very idea, Katsuki’s much less… lowkey.  _“DON’T SCREW WITH ME!”_

Sasuke just scoffs, looking done now that his sense of humor has been so under-appreciated. “A collab. Geez…”

Ochako’s eyebrows raise and she latches onto the change in subject. “Oh? I didn’t know you did that sort of thing.”

“Yeah, I’m nowhere near as good as my brother, but…” Sasuke shrugs. “My Quirk makes martial arts come fairly easy. Gunhead has some newbies who need shaping up.”

“Ahh, I see, that’s really cool!”

_“I’M STILL HERE YOU KNOW!”_

With a bit of a squeak, Ochako hurries to return the phone to her mouth. “Sorry, sorry. I didn’t mean to leave you hanging, Katsuki.”

On the other end, her boyfriend just huffs and there’s a brief beat of silence. When he speaks again, he’s much quieter.

_“He’s not… doing anything, is he?”_

Ochako snorts. “ _No,_ Katsuki. We’re trying to get out the hatch. He’s holding me steady while I try to get the door open.”

_“Holding… you steady?”_

“Yeah. Hey, Katsuki, I need to set the phone down for a second. I can’t do this one-handed. Here, talk to Sasuke a minute.”

When the Uchiha in question gives a slight nod of his head in confirmation, Ochako activates her Quirk on her phone and sends it floating his way. Trusting him to handle it from there, she then arches her back and starts running both hands across the edges of the hatch, search growing slightly frantic. There  _has_ to be some kind of lever or handle or something…

“Hi Bakugou,” Sasuke oozes false amity and Ochako just knows it’s going to tick the h*** out of the explosive man on the other end. She gets the feeling that’s exactly why the Uchiha did it. Their spite match is no joke.

As she braces both hands against the hatch door, Sasuke gives a derisive sniff. “I’m holding onto your girlfriend.”

Her lips pinch and she shoots him a mild look of reprimand. “Did you  _have_  to say it like that?”

He gives an absent nod, to her disgruntlement, and seems to give the phone the driest stare as he possibly can in his peripheral. It’s a crying shame she can’t hear what’s going on. Actually… that’s startling. Why is Katsuki being so quiet all of a sudden?

“Some people call this wisdom,” Sasuke says in response to something else she can’t hear.

She unfortunately can’t dwell on that right now. She tries shoving her shoulder into the hatch, to see if it’ll budge, but it’s hard to generate momentum for impact when you don’t have gravity. Ah, the drawbacks to being able to float…

“You’re an idiot,” Sasuke says.

This time, she can definitely hear the faintest of sound from the phone, even from her distance.  _“THE H***, A**HOLE, YOU BETTER NOT—”_

Sasuke muffles the phone against his collar and gazes up at her calmly. “Find anything?”

Ochako sighs. “I can’t get it to budge… I wonder if these dents did it?”

“If it was rubble that fell, it could be resting on top of it,” he offers.

Her eyes widen and she glances from him to the hatch and then back again. “Oh, hey, that would make sense… I wonder if I can get it cracked enough to float it?”

“No, Bakugou, I’m scheming with Ochako. Please hold.” Again, Sasuke muffles the phone. His expression doesn’t change at all; how he’s so relaxed while he’s busy dealing with her volatile boyfriend, she has no clue. It’s quite the feat. “Try it.”

Again, she attempts to ram herself into it, to no avail. She just can’t get the right leverage or weight behind herself. Ugh, of f***ing course the door she has to use her Quirk to reach won’t open with her Quirk active! Just f***ing great!

_…one of these days, I need to step back and reanalyze all the vocabulary I’m picking up from Katsuki._

“Deactivate your Quirk.” Sasuke releases her waist and ducks under her, turning around and standing up again with her thighs resting on his shoulders. “Okay, go.”

Trying not to think too hard about their current situation, Ochako releases her Quirk and feels her body weight return to her. Sasuke grunts a little. Then, while she throws everything she has into trying to pry the hatch open outward, even one, two inches, _something_ , the Uchiha raises the phone back into place.

“Calm down, sir,” he deadpans, “I can feel the vibrations from your volume in my coat. I’ll have to ask you to lower your voice.”

He sounds like a customer service agent. Ochako snickers a little, despite herself.

“Well, I’m sure Ochako’s flattered to know you trust her so much.”

Now there’s an undeniable pointedness to his voice and Ochako gives pause at the spike of tension in the air. Wait, what on earth are they talking about?

She tries the hatch again, just one more time, and this time she heaves into it as much as she possibly can. The door wobbles a fraction of an inch. Something rocks atop the roof. Sasuke lurches, and so does the entire elevator with the horrific sound of metal grating against metal. For one terrible second, Ochako’s stomach drops.

The elevator sinks down three inches… and stops.

For a moment, both of them are frozen, too afraid to move. Then Ochako sags against Sasuke’s head.

“Oh my gosh…” she breathes.

“I think we’re stuck here for now,” Sasuke voices what she now knows in her mind. She nods once, not even trying to argue, and removes her gravity again before she swings off his shoulders. She does  _not_ want to do any more jostling than she needs to at this point… three inches was already too far to fall. And they’re several stories up.

Once she sets her feet on the ground as gently as possible and returns her own weight, she holds her hand out for the phone. “Here, let me talk to him.”

Sasuke gladly hands the device over. “I hate your boyfriend, by the way.”

The tension from both before and the sudden scare bring a nervous laugh bubbling to her throat. “Haaa ha ha ha, he, uh… he hates you too.”

“I know.”

 _“OCHAKO!”_ Katsuki’s voice tears over the connection, making her jump. She hurries to put it against her ear and give him a response.

“S-Sorry! Okay, I’m here.”

_“I heard something crash.”_

“Oh, we’re okay. I just… moved too much. The elevator slipped a little.”

_“It’s loose!?”_

“Yeah, but… it seems to be okay now that we’re not moving. So… I think we’re gonna be stuck here for a while.” She purses her lips and tries her best to send her apologizes over the airwaves. “I might be late to dinner tonight…”

_“Don’t apologize, d*** it. Just stay safe!”_

She smiles a little. “You know I will, Katsuki.”

_“Uh-huh… uh-huh, and hey, since when are you on a first-name basis with that loser?”_

She blinks, her mind doing a nice backflip to try and account for the sudden shift from concern to suspicion. Or… maybe it’s all the same? She glances across the elevator, through the darkness that her eyes have grown accustomed to, and meets Sasuke’s gaze, which is just as unimpressed as it always is. “Sasuke? I mean… I dunno, ever since third year. Remember, it was hard to call him ‘Uchiha’ while we were at his house doing all that training with Itachi? I guess it’s just habit now…”

_“Yeah, well, c-can you just… not??”_

Slowly, far too slowly, it’s beginning to dawn on her what this really is. She’s not sure why she didn’t think of it before… it just hits her now. She plants her free hand on her hip and if she was home now, she’d be giving him that Look that she learned from his mother. “Katsuki… what’s this really about?”

Silence. Then… he sighs. She waits.

 _“I just…”_ He’s properly subdued himself. He doesn’t sound terribly happy about it… but he does it for her.  _“I just feel like I should be there… not him. That’s… that’s it. It’s stupid.”_

She looks at Sasuke again. He’s sunk down to sit on the floor with his back against the elevator doors. His head is tilted back, the reddish light illuminating his pale face framed and half-covered by his dark hair. Now that he’s older, he looks even more like his brother…

He’s handsome, sure. Just… not her type.

She speaks with a fond smile. “Maybe a little. Katsuki, I can’t step into an elevator without thinking about you. Remember, our first kiss was in an elevator? We were going to the observation deck at the Skytree while you were on break, and you stole it once the elevator doors closed.”

_“G—F—D… Ochako, don’t just SAY that, not—”_

“Well, do you remember or not?”

A beat passes. Then,  _“…mm.”_

She nods. “So please, don’t worry. Everything’s gonna be fine.”

_“I’m not—… I’m not f***ing worried. You’re stronger than everyone out there fighting that stupid Villain right now.”_

Her smile widens. “Okay. Good.”

Her phone buzzes against her temple and she raises it away to glance at it. An alert fills her screen, which makes disappointment fill her gut. She whimpers a little.

_I really need to get better at keeping this thing charged…_

“Um, Katsuki… my battery’s running low.”

_“Again!? Ochako, I swear—!”_

“I know, I know. I just need to hang up now to save what I’ve got. I’ll text you though, okay?”

He growls, but there’s not much incense behind it and she knows he’s lost most of his fight for now.  _“F***ing… fine.”_

“All right. We’ll get outta here soon.”

_“Mm-hm, the Pros’ve almost caught the guy…”_

“Great. See you soon, then. I love you!”

There’s a brief beat in which Ochako can almost vividly imagine the distinct shade of pink his cheeks are tinging. When he replies, it’s a harried mumble that only she can accurately interpret.

_“MmmIloveyoutoo.”_

No longer able to help a grin, she lowers the phone from her ear and ends the call. Immediately, she dims the brightness and then locks the screen, in hopes of conserving what 12% battery power she has left. Then, with great care, she sags against the wall opposite her unfortunate Comrade in Trapped, and sinks to the floor. Their feet brush parallel to one another in the small, cramped space.

She runs the last few minutes over in her mind, absorbing all the information so as not to forget as much later—specifics are so hard for her to recall once they’re past…

Suddenly, she turns to Sasuke. “Hate’s a strong word.”

Sasuke cracks his eyes open. “Hm?”

“Before, I said Katsuki hates you. But… that’s not what I meant.”

He blinks. “That’s what  _I_  meant. ‘Hate’ is a perfect word.”

She smirks a little, knowing at least half-well that he’s simply being his naturally-intense self. Which is something she has a lot of experience in. “He actually respects you a lot. You and Deku and Todoroki… you’re his rivals and that means more than he’ll ever say. You give him something to work hard toward.”

And quite to her amusement, he looks terribly uncomfortable. He stares off to one side, shifting his feet. His boots brush against her ankles. “O… kay…”

Satisfied with the outcome of this, Ochako takes a note from him and rests her head back against the wall. Who knows how much of a wait they’ll be in for… but if Katsuki is right and the Pros almost have the perpetrator, they should be out in no time. She’ll have to deal with the police report and rescheduling her interview, which will be a pain… but then she’ll get to go home. To him. Maybe she should swing by the nearest market and pick up something fun for dinner, splurge a little… Something spicy, just for him. She smiles at the thought.

“So… your first kiss. An elevator? Really?”

At the amusement in Sasuke’s voice, a wave of heat rushes to her cheeks and she flops her face into her hands to hide it, dim lighting be d****ed. Her weight leaves her and she’s floating again, but… “Holy... gooooooosh, I can’t believe I said that out loud!!”


End file.
